


With Tender Patience

by PaulaMcG



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Boys In Love, Butterbeer (Harry Potter), Hints at other Lily-pairings, Hogsmeade, Hogwarts, Holding Hands, Honeydukes, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Invisibility Cloak (Harry Potter), M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), Pranks and Practical Jokes, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, The Marauder's Map, Touch Aversion, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21696418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaulaMcG/pseuds/PaulaMcG
Summary: In October of his sixth year at Hogwarts, a Hogsmeade trip offers Sirius both pleasant and perilous moments.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Kudos: 6





	With Tender Patience

**Author's Note:**

> Sirius and his friends and foes will never help me make any money.
> 
> The two pairings are still somehow unrequited, emerging, and the earlier Lily-pairings are fading or just unusual friendships.
> 
> This piece can stand on its own, but it also belongs to the same extensive story in my Rowling's-first-five-novels-compliant universe as the rest of my fanfiction.

“You and me, we could use the – what I’ve just found,” Peter whispers.

Kneeling on the Gryffindor-scarlet hearthrug, warming up my hands, I turn my head in time to see him lift his eyes to James beside him – and his hand from the parchment, which now twirls back into a roll and rolls down, for me to catch just before the flames catch it.

I have to admit our Wormy’s got some nerve, which is not bad at all for a Marauder. Instead of taking advantage of Prongs helping him with his new challenge of NEWT-level Transfiguration, he’s defying their shared punishment: plotting to get to Hogsmeade anyway.

Sliding the parchment roll back onto the table, I nudge Moony with an elbow, then sneak a hand to check how cold his bare feet still are. He’s giving me a grin – and a thumbs-up, perhaps meant for Peter. 

“You can’t concentrate here.” James has taken the roll, and now swats Peter on the head with it. “Let’s get to our dorm!”

“You, too!” I reach for Moony’s hand to pull him up with me. “To put some shoes on.”

He’s woken me up early to share his first-frost ritual like last autumn, and this time he grabbed some bread from the Great Hall on the way, so that we’ve had a simple breakfast while striding along the lake shore, watching the sunrise gradually light up the trees and their reflections, and reveal their newly-emerged secret colours, as he calls them.

He says he wants to be pierced by the cold together with the trees, so as to feel connected to their change, because they, unlike him, turn into something true and beautiful. I tell him that he is… and the wolf, too, is beautiful. But he always only shakes his head. I wish he could want his own change. Me and my absurd wishes again! In any case I hope the ritual means that this was the last time before spring he went barefoot outside.

“And socks!” I order, stepping in from the staircase, and realising that I’m again – or still? – holding Remus’s hand.

We’ve hoped that I’d get used to this, but now I must beware of getting too far. Who were there in the common room, possibly watching the two of us exit – spying on this secret as well as the Marauders’ shared ones?

James has already taken out one of those: his invisibility cloak.

“T’was just an idea,” Peter’s saying.

“A great one!” James lashes with his wand towards Remus and me, and seals the door behind us with his personal, voiceless charm.

With the cloak on his shoulders, with his head the only visible part of him, he kneels to lift his mattress and gets the map from under it. “Of course, you must go. And I’m going to try and get into that tunnel with you. Show me where exactly the entrance is! There’re so many statues of ugly witches.”

“I pointed out the statue to Remus when we passed it yesterday. Hey…” Peter turns towards the two of us.

There’s a pause, then a frown – his recurring signals to remind me that I’m getting too far, or too close, depending on how you take it: close to my Moony.

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.” James has tapped the map with his wand.

Peter starts again, “Hey Moony, have you marked it on the map yet?”

I move aside – just where I want, regardless of what Wormy thinks about it. I’m Remus’s closest friend now, and it’s perfectly natural that I can go and rummage in his trunk, looking for his thickest pair of socks, and that I consider this the most urgent task, even though I am, of course, excited about the new tunnel.

Here: a soft, woollen pair. Lowering the lid of the trunk, I see all three of them at James’s bed: James himself still on his knees, Peter standing, bent to slide his wand over the parchment, looking for the right part of the castle – “Third floor, the corridor here” – and my Moony sitting cross-legged on the coverlet.

I go and sit down on the edge of the bed, and lay the ball of socks on Moony’s lap. His left hand brushes mine as well as the wool when reaching out to touch a dot of green ink on the map. And after he withdraws his finger, a perfect miniature painting emerges: the statue of a humpbacked, one-eyed witch.

“Wicked!” James exclaims.

“You’re amazing.” I’ve ended up admiring the artist instead of his work, and doing it tenderly.

“Isn’t it?” Peter’s certainly proud of his own achievement – and for a reason. 

As a rat trying to escape Filch’s cat – stupidly – by climbing on a statue, and by accident spotting a crack in it, almost falling in. Big Deal. But returning to examine the crack, first in man form, with a hand, then venturing in as a rat, and even following the tunnel he found until its end! All by himself, before reporting to us. He’s perhaps no such coward I’ve thought – and definitely no such tag-along as he’s made our teachers consider him, so as to appear as innocent of our pranks.

He can actually be proud of having got caught in the latest one red-handed together with James. And perhaps I should be ashamed of what I was doing with Moony at the same time, on the Saturday before the full moon – yes, two weeks ago: fortunately not picking flowers, as there weren’t any left, but – almost as bad – berries and mushrooms. Like a fairy.

“We can all go and sneak to Hogsmeade through the tunnel,” I hear myself say before stopping to think about it.

“No,” Remus says immediately. “It would look suspicious if the the two of us who are allowed to go didn’t leave openly.”

“But you can help Wormy and me on your way to the marble staircase. Let them all think we’re doing homework in here. We’ll wait under the cloak beside the portrait hole and go through just before you; you open it and stop for something.” And here James pauses to give me a grin. “Like for Pads to tie Moony’s shoelace.”

I’ve pulled on one of the socks for Moony, and now I thrust the other one into his hands – but choose to grin back.

“Prongs,” Peter, pointedly ignoring us, says in a grave tone, “are you forgetting we need to widen the crack in the statue before you can get through it down into the tunnel?”

“I can do it. Just need the will and the trust and some magic.” James, my true brother – always so sure of himself!

“You can also prepare. No, it won’t take long.” Remus leaves the sock only half-way on and, instead, pulls his wand out. “Accio, premium quill! Through the map we can prepare the statue. Thanks to you, Pads!”

His words to me have taken me unawares, and now the warm light of his eyes flashes towards me as well: his amber eyes. Yes, I’ve named their colour – proud of knowing some colours, gemstone colours better than he does. “What?” is all I manage now, not knowing anything about any trick he could try.

He’s caught the quill in his left hand. “All the Galleons on quality art equipment have not gone wasted, though you wanted to squander them on me. It must be essential that we’ve started the map on parchment with special sensitivity for hiding and resurrecting ink. When Wormy showed the statue to me, I did touch it with my left hand – you know, my painting hand. But I didn’t expect the picture to turn out so real. Of course, I haven’t learned any true Magic of Images.”

I know that real, moving art is his dream and ambition. And I understand that he’s now learning something that has for him a significance beyond our shared project of mapping Hogwarts castle and grounds.

“It must be due to the parchment and this quill, and to this superior ink. Now let me try! Prongs, you’ve got the will, first of all – and the need. To spell out your need, what will your own incantation be?”

He is incredible, our Moony! James and I may have the strongest magical skill, but he’s guiding even James as if he were a teacher.

James’s grin widens. “I need to cut the statue open, dissect it.”

Suddenly I know to add, “No, to descend is what you really need: descend to the tunnel.”

I’m rewarded with another flash of Moony’s gaze and a smile.

“Descendium!” James exclaims triumphantly.

Remus nods to him, and bends over the map. I move closer and see a tiny drop of green ink fall next to the picture of the statue, and Remus’s quill draw the drop into a short stroke.

“That’s your wand, tapping the witch’s hump.” He taps the picture with his wand, and in the re-emerged blank spot he writes with the most careful flourishes of his left-hand handwriting, usually reserved for emotional messages or diary entries: Dissendium!

“How did you spell it?” James asks, as the writing has shrunk and soon disappears completely.

“Never mind! Sorry but I don’t even now if this will make a difference. But I’ll be curious to hear if you can see the picture with the wand and the speech bubble when you get to the statue.”

Peter looks dumbfounded – perhaps as much by Remus’s carefree attitude as by the quill work, which he can hardly understand any better than I. “But Prongs, perhaps you’ll need more than a bit of time for cracking that witch open.”

“Pads and Moony can still help us when passing through that corridor on their way. Wormy, you’ll transform and scurry from under the cloak at the beginning of the corridor and stay there in watch, and squeak if you hear or see anyone coming. And the two of you, continue past us, and even from the staircase beyond the end of the corridor you can warn me if needed.”

“Yes.” Remus taps the parchment again, so as to now hide all the marks on it. “Mischief managed! It would be so much better, if the map could always warn us. But all right: Pads and I’ll go on having a conversation, and if we hear or see someone approach, I’ll say...”

“No, you’ll be the one babbling, so I’ll say – loud, ‘No way!’”

“All right!” James sounds perfectly confident about the plan. “Let’s get going!”

Does he want to go immediately? But I still need some time to get Moony ready for the trip. 

“We’re coming down soon after you. And you, too, if you mean to make it to Hogsmeade, you’d better take other cloaks besides that one. It’s freezing out.”

“Right,” Peter agrees with me. Indeed, once again, after initial hesitation he’s agreed to implementing his own idea – as he usually agrees with everyone, in the end. “It’s cold in the tunnel, too.”

I still wish I could crack the witch open with Prongs, and examine the tunnel, and arrive in the cellar of Honeydukes. But I’ll get to do it on another day. And I’m also comforted to know that the new route wouldn’t save me from the cold, which I hate. Yes, maybe it’s not Moony who suffers the most from cold, but I love the idea that I’m trying my best to save him.

“Winter boots,” I’m saying to him, when the door closes after our invisible friends.

“They won’t fit with these socks.”

“My boots are too small for me, too. Seriously.” It’s true: my feet, like his, have still grown since last winter, and my only fitting pair is these summer shoes I bought with what mother Potter insisted on giving me for souvenirs from Brighton. “You take them.”

I’ve tried them on in the early morning, so they’re beside my bed for me to grab at once and bring to him where he’s crouching to store the valuable quill under his fourposter. When he stands up without replying, I push him on the chest with the boots, and he falls to sit down on the bed.

I settle beside him, not quite touching. I drop the boots and grab his ankle. “Hurry! They’re waiting. I help you with one – tie the laces, too, as Prongs guessed I’d be glad to do – while you put on the other.”

He places his hand down on mine, and I look up at his face. He’s opening his mouth – to protest, I think at first.

No, he wants to kiss me. Instead, he lifts his hand to my temple and strokes the eyebrow with a finger. “Thank you.”

And now he allows me to guide a foot into a boot, and quickly takes care of the other one himself. We’ve forgotten to leave any laces untied, but who cares.

While we’re fastening our cloaks, I remember something else. “Cold enough yet for the quirrel-lined hat?”

“No. Besides, I… have to confess: I lent it to Wormy last winter – on a cold day when I… wasn’t fit to go out anyway. And he lost it. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you then; I felt it was such a pity, and I knew you’d feel the same.”

Does he always assume I feel the same? This time I dare say, “I don’t.” I don’t even believe Wormy in the way he does. Maybe the rat sold it. “I don’t feel it’s such a pity to lose something that reminds me of…” Of whom I used to call mother. “I feel angry with Wormy. And frustrated.” Because I now have no money to buy a new fancy hat for my Moony.

What I’ve said aloud may have been enough to upset him. He’s stepping out to the stairs before me, but stops at the threshold. 

“Wait. I can take… Accio, scarf!” He points his wand back over his shoulder, so that I must dodge.

The lid of his trunk opens a crack, and a fabulously long, striped, knit woollen scarf snakes out, flies past me, and wraps itself around his neck.

“Wow. I like that.” I’m happy to find it easy to say something that will please him. “The colours look good on you: green and...” 

He seals the door behind us. “Apricot. But that dye’s made of some withered leaves… lily of the valley, I think. Our Gumby’s – among other things – an expert in dyeing wool,” he goes on babbling, while leading the way down to the common room and towards the portrait hole. “But the knitting was done by Mr Grubber, one of our best actors – one of those you’d call more than human, and more than a goblin, too.”

I open the portrait hole with my wand. He’s kept rearranging the scarf until one end’s trailing on the floor. Perhaps he’s ready to step on it himself.

But I do it, just when I feel an elbow on my side. “Sorry.”

We stop, efficiently blocking the way from everyone except the invisible pair.

Remus flings the scarf once more around his neck, continuing, “He – Grubber – he’s got uncanny skills in his hands, I’ve always known…

“But he’s such a grim character that he really took me unawares by making something like this, and as a present for me, who used to play pranks on him.”

We’ve come down from the Gryffindor tower, and we’re now walking side by side along corridors. I can smell James’s posh perfume just in front of me, and Peter’s sweat.

Remus goes on about the members of his mother’s theatre troupe, and I’m not really listening at all. It must be this corridor. I’d like to go and see the crack in the hump, but there’s a group of fourth-year girls not much ahead of us, and not so much excited about a Hogsmeade trip this autumn any longer that they wouldn’t glance back at the two of us every now and then – not suspiciously, which is good, of course, but hopefully, I’m afraid: two tall, handsome guys. I hope they aren’t staring at the hems of our too short robes fixedly enough so as to spot the rat now scurrying out from under James’s cloak.

“… Is hardly ever Sirius,” Moony’s saying. No, serious.

And I look at him closely, because I’ve recognised the statue, and I mustn’t stare at it or where I feel Prongs stepping aside.

My Moony’s face – its hue warm, healthy, with some remains of tan, and perhaps accentuated by the green – is already turned towards me, and now, after a slightest pause and without changing his tone into the sad, complaining, accusatory one I’ve been dreading, he says, “I hoped you’d come to the Cotswolds, and meet them all – as well as the sheep, and their shepherd.”

He must have felt like saying this since the third of September when – due to the full moon – he arrived at school a day late, on Tuesday. And now he does it when James can hear, and I can’t reply. I truly hope nobody’s coming towards us beyond the end of the corridor, so I won’t be forced to exclaim: No way!

No, thank God. Both staircases leading from here are empty, with the exception of the girls heading down to the second floor and towards the marble staircase. And behind me I can hear I soft creaking sound, and then the clicking of tiny claws, approaching and stopping half-way the corridor. Prongs must have succeeded in the spell – voicelessly, too, if not in a quietest whisper.

“I’d really like to see…” I cut in on what’s perhaps a description of a flock of sheep.

Perhaps Remus understands my double meaning. “You can’t now, of course not.”

I know. There may be people coming soon behind, as there were many – and not only first-years and second-years – in the common room. And we’d have no one to warn us.

“You’ll have another chance,” he adds.

Now we’re reaching the tail of the queue half-way the marble staircase. No chance for real conversation in this crowd.

And it must sound natural not to say more than, “Feels strange to be going without James and Peter.”

Just when I’ve said it, a dark, greasy head a couple of steps below us turns around. Snape smirks at us, then sticks his ugly nose almost into the closest fellow Slytherin’s ear, whispering to him – a seventh-year it must be; he’s been surrounded by them this autumn, no longer a loner… Rabastan!

No, I must call him Lestrange, and better call him nothing and not think of him at all, and look away. He is the last one, this the last year, and they’ll all be gone: blood-purist buggers!

I don’t belong to them – in any sense. Not wanting to glance at Remus, who’s something else, of course, something special, more than a man, I catch the eye of one of the girls in front of us. She’s batting her lashes and blushing. I let my gaze wander over the group of them, fourteen-year-old awkward witches, as if appraising them, without having to fake the almost contemptuous indifference as my conclusion.

Finally we’re down in front of Filch. He looks half happy when scanning the short list of sixth-year Gryffindor boys, and spells it out, “Before next Hogsmeade weekend I’ll catch the two of you, too.”

I share a glance and a grin with Remus. But the pleasure in the sight of him beside me turns into an idea – hopefully only mine – of what the two of us alone might be caught doing, and I’m glad I don’t blush easily.

Striding quickly through the entrance hall, we pass the girls. Snape and the Slytherin seventh-year boys are only a bit ahead of us. I’d hate walking all the way behind them, restricted by their pace.

“Let’s pass them before the gates,” I whisper when we’ve descended the front steps, hearing irritation and impatience in my voice, “and take the shortcut behind the first corner in the lane, to gain more distance!”

“Hurry!” Remus responds loudly enough. “We can still catch up with Amelia.”

Rushing after him, grateful, I keep my eyes on the winged boars atop the gate pillars, determined not to show any reaction when hearing Lestrange’s drawling words, “Blood traitor’s got one dogged griffon left for company.”

But I feel my cheeks burning, after all. I’m even sweating.

We’ve marched along the lane for perhaps thirty yards before I become fully aware of the harsh north wind blowing against us. Now, after this sharp bend, the hedge would offer some shelter. But having checked that the Slytherins can’t see us, Remus slips through the gap between the shrubs – hawthorn, of course I remember by now.

Beyond, he turns his back against the wind and takes a slow step backwards, with a serene smile. And as he reaches out a hand – bare like mine, as we must have both lost or forgotten our gloves, or perhaps just got too fond of touching each other’s skin in this way – I accept it for a moment, as if I needed him to pull me free from the dense entanglement of branches. From the entanglement of my disgusting background and past, yes.

Wrapping our cloaks tight around ourselves, we start trudging across the frozen, harvested field as fast as we can. And I keep as close to him as I can without stumbling against him. The cold sunshine makes the hawthorn on the other side of the open space glow yellow and red, purple and bronze.

The gap here is not easy to spot, or perhaps he lingers on purpose just a bit longer where we have privacy. With a cold finger he draws a line from my eyebrow now all the way to my chin, while I keep staring at…

“You know what I’m staring at? Your beautiful colours.” My voice is hoarse, and I take a deep breath, and plunge into touching my lips to his temple. My very first voluntary kiss.

In his smile I’m finding the warmth of summer, of the days together we missed. Now this surprise step of mine has made up for some of my failures. 

“Stay here?” he whispers.

“I wish...” But I continue, together with him, “No.”

“We should be in Honeydukes before Wormy and Prongs,” I get to read on his pretty lips, before he grabs my hand and creeps into the gap to cautiously peek through the hedge.

He pulls me out to this short stretch, which is luckily deserted. Letting go my hand, he hurries towards the next bend. Beyond, the lane continues straight, and the people closest to us are at least fifty yards ahead. When I get to see that the closest ones behind us are a couple, not the Slytherin gang, I start feeling almost free.

Walking on briskly at my Moony’s side, I reach for the end of his scarf and wrap it around my hands. “I really wanted to come.”

We must both have been afraid to talk about this. From any reference to what we did during the holidays, we’ve guided – or he’s rather been the first to guide – our attention back to the moment. On our private escapades, which we’ve tried to make weekly, and definitely right before and after full moons, which means only three times so far this autumn, we’ve continued the lessons he started teaching me last spring.

On drizzly evenings we’ve found shelter under dense vegetation in the woods, and he’s introduced more of both magical and merely mundane plants and creatures to me, gently expressing his amazement at how I haven’t known even the common wormwood. I’m good at remembering names, but not so at observing details, particularly at learning to recognise edible mushrooms. Yet, even I have found some handsome ceps, which he also calls penny buns – and more maggot-infested ugly ones – and chanterelles, my favourites: orange or yellow, pretty like flowers. He’s managed to locate some nearly dry wood and built a real campfire, and fried chanterelles on sticks and taught me to appreciate the smoky and surprisingly fruity taste.

He loves food as well as beauty, and sometimes in nature these two are the same thing. Bilberries – or blaeberries, as they’re called here – dyed our fingers and mouths purple on our first outing, and later we’ve picked brambles – common blackberries, rubus fruticosus – and, leaving the rowan berries for birds in the winter, some haws from these hedges, and not too many of those either, he warns me, or they’d upset the stomach. We’ll try to keep still and not scare off the redwings, fieldfares and blackbirds, with whom we share this food. They’re to migrate soon, he says, and they don’t sing like in the spring. We whistle – always softly – their mating calls, as I, too, learnt to do back then, and I wonder if they get confused or wistful.

As my Moony now looks wistful but doesn’t reply, I decide I’ve mustered up enough courage to continue, “I know in May I promised to come with Prongs.”

And I know he wanted me to come alone, too. Now, while I’ve been unwilling to hear him express his disappointment – as if he, always almost irritatingly grateful for the smallest blessings, ever did such a thing, in case it concerns only him personally and not persecuted groups in this unfair world – he, in turn, must have been dreading my confession that I didn’t feel comfortable about the prospects of abundant privacy, of intimate interaction at his home. He’d rather not mention what didn’t happen yet.

Instead, he goes on with tender patience. He praises me for my slow progress: now I choose my dog form usually only when Prongs and Wormy are with us and it is – in my view, yes, that is still my view, although they must somehow know, and I trust Prongs even approves – the only way we can caress each other. Alone with him at the campfire, or sheltered by the hawthorn, I stroke his feet and his arms, and, as he wishes, his chest and left shoulder under his clothes, without looking at the oldest scars. And sometimes I manage to bear his touching my bare skin, in turn, beyond holding my hand. By now I, when fully clothed, welcome the shape of his body pressing against my chest and belly and thighs, even against my back and buttocks, unless he takes me unawares.

These thoughts now stir an arousal in me, stronger than ever, alarming me. But it becomes fully pleasant when I turn towards him, who walks close to me, still silent, with his eyes focused on the palette of the hedges, and with his hair, faded by the summer, now lit bronze by the brilliant sun. Wanting him is unlike wanting anyone else. We’re to heal each other, and in this wind I wish I were the sun or the woollen scarf trying to keep him warm.

Almost involuntarily my hands make a quick, small pull. His gaze, turning to me, is not even startled. He looks pleased and as absolutely unruffled as is possible when his hair’s being flung around his face with violent gusts. I understand that he’s not been brooding on the attempted conversation at all, just enjoying the moment.

“I wanted,” I start again. “I also wanted to help Prongs come and surprise you. It was a new gift for you. The stag was, he said.”

“Yes, he said that to my mother and father, too.” His smile’s ever wider. “They were rather, let’s say overwhelmed. In any case happy about this exchange of two secrets. They don’t need to know the rest, if you and Peter don’t want that. But all of it could make them only happier. All of it.”

That’s it. I’m still not sure I want them to know what I’ve become for their son. That I want to be like him so as to make his hurting less at least. That for him I’ve learnt and become a dog, and I’ve promised to be a dog for him whenever he needs – and to do my best to be also a man for him.

For him, who’s too beautiful, more than human, and who’s taught me to look for the beauty in all things created, as well as to understand better the injustice caused by human greed. For him, who’s evoked in me all this melodramatic jargon about light and hope. Also an image of a gate out from the darkness in which I was born and raised, and violated.

A full year ago I learnt that I want to stay close to his light, and that he needs me to touch him. I don’t know for sure but perhaps it can help me, too. Still, it’s hard to get through: hard work for this stray to unlearn the fear of touch. That’s why I was not only frustrated but also relieved when…

“I had to cover up for Prongs,” I begin to explain. “His parents wouldn’t let us out on a full-moon night. Unlike in this climate, there are packs and probably solitary ones...” No, we don’t want to talk about werewolves now. Seeking reliable information on them is a hopeless task. We – all four of us – are determined to just continue to do our best and deal with our furry little problem.

“In any case,” I go on, adjusting my hands in the folds of the scarf, thrilled to find one of his hands in there, too, “it’s customary in Godric’s Hollow, like almost everywhere in England, not to go out at full moon. James said we planned to sleep early, and we pretended to stay in his room. We’d prepared for that by staying out almost the whole of the previous night, so that they’d believe we were sleepy. Well before sunset James went to ask for some food to make sandwiches and eat with me in his room while listening to Wizarding Wireless…” To Spooky Special, which Remus can’t have ever listened to.

I don’t look at his face when interrupting my almost too fluent account for a moment – but glance behind to check that the Slytherins haven’t caught up. No, and others would think nothing of the two of us walking so close together.

James must have described this from his perspective, but having got started, I find it easy to continue in detail. “After he sneaked to the living room fireplace and travelled by floo to that inn in the Cotswolds – the Headless Queen, right? – and when he was striding as a stag across the fields between Stow-on-the-Wold and Bagendon, I went to ask for two portions of ice cream. I didn’t lie that one of them would be for James. And soon I lay down next to a wizard chess board on the floor of his room.

“When his father came to see us before midnight, I just sat up, as if woken up by the opening of the door, and put a finger on my lips, and let him believe that the shape James had made of pillows and a blanket was his sleeping son. He didn’t check – couldn’t possibly suspect that he’d gone away without me. I’m glad it all worked out like that. I didn’t want to actually lie to them...” Who’d given me a home.

“It’s all right.” In the shelter of the wool, Moony’s rubbing my palm with a thumb. “I’m glad they didn’t have to get worried. Sorry you had to deceive them, and you did it for my sake. Just a part of everything you’ve done for my sake.”

That gratefulness again. Just a part of how beautiful he is.

“It was incredible.” He launches into his own narration. “A luminous long evening, the fourth of July. I was still up in our big hall, having tea with my parents and Gumby, and we saw this stag come through our orchard, come all the way to the window. Remember I’ve described the pitched roof covered with moss and grass, sweeping so close to the ground that the house resembles a hill? The windows are so low that the stag had to bow his head so as to show his antlers to me. The antlers I recognised: I’d seen them several times since May, though for only a few minutes every time.

“And then he surprised us further, all of us. I couldn’t imagine he’d decided to reveal his secret, so I first thought it was an accident. But there he was, calmly introducing himself to my family, ‘James Potter, an illegal Animagus, your son’s loyal friend and companion for any day and any night, as a stag for tonight and any full moon he needs me.’

“We didn’t offer long explanations. Didn’t mention you or Peter – while he did say that it had been proved at four full moons that I stayed calm all through the night in the company of an Animagus. My parents believed him. You know, two years ago they agreed to give me a cat as a companion in my cellar room, when I was convinced enough to manage to convince them about my discovery that I didn’t hurt a stray rat.

“They must still think that James came into the cellar and transformed, stayed with me in there. I can remember seeing the door open and him standing there in his human form. And that’s it. And as you know, he told me only here, only two weeks ago, only when he wanted to persuade me – and did, too. I let you set me free after he told me he had already done it. The wolf had been running free in the woods at home.”

He bites his lip. He doesn’t need to repeat it. I won’t forget how, on that Sunday before the full moon, I sensed his breathing quicken, as I was sitting next to him under the beech near the lake, my arm almost touching his, while James was pacing in front of us, excited. How I sensed him force the breathing to slow down and his anger to abate. And he said in a flat voice: I guess I should be grateful.

“He should have asked you then, back in July,” I now finally say.

“Whatever.” He jerks at the scarf – jerks me closer. “What I wanted to say to you with this… My parents told me that at the early-August and early-September full moons I sounded less calm than on the fourth of July or during previous holidays. Perhaps partly because they obviously heard nothing from the cellar when James was supposed to be there. Later I’ve realised the wolf may have missed the freedom. But at first I thought the whining meant just that the wolf missed the stag – and his Pads, of course.” 

Why is it the harder to say I’m sorry, the more I feel I haven’t been enough for him? I know only to explain. “I felt I couldn’t sneak away at any other time either. They were more worried about me than about their own son, always worried that someone, any relative of mine…”

It was my own fear, too. After what he learnt from me in May, Remus would understand, but I don’t feel like bringing it up. All right, I admit it to myself. Ever since I escaped at Christmas I’ve been scared my parents will force me back, force me to a marriage, or that uncle Alphard… But they haven’t tried, and now that I’m coming of age in a month, the fear feels unreal, insubstantial, particularly when compared with my Moony’s ordeals. 

“And then they took us to Muggle Brighton for more than a full month. Without broomsticks, without floo network.”

Would I have been ready to go to the Cotswolds if I’d had the chance? I decided I could do the same as James did: reveal my secret, revealing I knew Remus’s.

But I’m reluctant to as much as meet Remus’s parents, just because he’s explained to me how they approve of relationships – yes, sexual relationships – between any consenting grown-ups, and sixteen is grown-up enough for them. Yes, between any creatures. With the exception of a werewolf, who mustn’t hide his condition from his partner, or risk having progeny, and therefore can have only a reliable, preferably same-sex partner. Just because they’d accept – while I’m not able to accept myself.

“Next summer it’ll be different,” I say nevertheless. Will I be able by then? “I’ll just Apparate to you from wherever I’ll be. I’ll be seventeen. And on my own – that’s what I want: supporting myself somehow, perhaps having a job in Brighton or in Stow-in-the-Wold for the summer. And in Hogsmeade over the school terms.”

Here the lane turns into the high street. I squeeze Moony’s hand once more and untangle the scarf.

He smiles, inclining his head towards the pink-curtained teashop window. “You can work at Madam Puddifoot’s. I’ll bring my date, and you’ll get jealous, serving tea and cakes to me and him.”

I glance around and swat his ruddy, wind-bitten cheek with the end of the scarf. “Now behave yourself, or you won’t get any sweets!” I say, quickening my step and marching towards Honeydukes.

“All right. You know I want badly at least one,” he still whispers on the threshold, winking, “sweetheart!” 

In the sudden warmth of the toffee-scented air I feel disoriented. It’s so crowded in here that I wonder if invisibility can possibly be enough for James and Peter to get through the sweet shop unnoticed. I force myself to focus on scanning the room, locating spots where they could avoid being touched: the back corner, under that shelf…

Since Wormy was courageous enough to push open the trapdoor on top of the high flight of stone steps he found, and even to cross the cellar and climb the wooden stairs to the door and listen closely behind it, we can be sure the two of them will be entering the shop through the door behind the counter. How can we help them? I should have discussed a plan for this with Remus on our way, instead of dwelling on the past summer.

He taps my shoulder, more gently than it probably looks, still startling me. “We must consider carefully which ones are best.” He’s heading for the end of the counter furthest away from the door behind it. “Sirius, come here!” he exclaims, and then talks politely to the shopkeeper, “Excuse me…”

Yes, we’re good at improvising, and I can do this even better. I step next to Remus and grab a glass jar on the counter. Shaking the jar, I make the sugar quills in it rattle loudly – and the shopkeeper trample to us in a hurry.

“Are these new? Huge sugar quills, worth paying a lot, unless they taste like ink,” I’m saying when I see the door behind the distressed shopkeeper open a crack for a moment. “Can we get a free sample?”

“I guess not,” Remus says when the shopkeeper takes the jar from me, frowning. “My favourite chocolate’s back there.”

He pulls me by the sleeve towards the safe corner, skirting the crowd so that we secure a route for our invisible friends to move from behind the counter without anyone colliding with them. As soon as we’ve stopped by the chocolate stand, I get a confirmation that they truly have arrived: someone steps on my foot.

I crouch as if to tie a shoelace. And I feel like laughing as Wormy’s whiskers tickle my hand. It’s clever of him to stay in his smaller form under the cloak, perhaps in James’s hands. And now I can feel James’s fingers – slipping a coin to mine.

Standing up abruptly, I hold it tight in my closed fist. I don’t have to look: it’s a gold Galleon. I feel dizzy and shivery, I feel my face hot, my feet cold. I must – breathe, and run! No, I’m not trapped here. But the Galleon burns my hand, like the last one Alphard tried to sneak to my back pocket, the one I snatched before running because I needed money for the Knight Bus – but not to his house, never. Like the first one when I was nine and pressed against the disgusting… No. No one’s buying me. And I’ll spend just a bit of James’s money, if it’s needed for diversion, and give the rest back. Now focus!

Is not even Remus focused on our friends’ predicament? With his head still bent over the chocolate assortment, he’s standing so close to me that, sensitive to any changes in my moods and my body, he’s certainly noticed that something’s wrong. I raise my hand and open the fist a little for him to see the coin and – I know – to somehow understand.

Trust him to dare touch my hand even now, probably even believing it’ll make me feel less anxious.

He presses my fist closed with his both hands, and scolds me, “No, don’t squander so much of your money!” As if he didn’t know it’s not mine. “But maybe buy these four small chocolate bars. Chocolate always makes me feel better. Perhaps it’ll comfort also those poor bastards who had to stay behind. But let’s still check what they’ve got over there!”

And he leads the way to escort Prongs and Wormy along the walls and under the shelves, all the rest of the way around the shop, up to the front door. They must be crouching behind him, under the windowsill, while I’m queuing for the cashier. And when I’m handing out the gold and receiving a fistful of silver, he opens the door as if impatient, giving them time to exit.

Out on the street we can finally relax. Even though there’re students coming and going, here there’s space for those two, who at least themselves know where exactly they are, to take care of themselves.

“What now?” Remus says, adjusting his scarf, and shivering. Standing still, he, too, gets cold more easily. “You know seeing a haunted house is always something special for me, and I don’t mind we only get to see it from the outside.”

“Don’t you think it’s too cold to go just there?”

But I start walking towards the Shrieking Shack anyway, hoping that further on the road we’ll get a chance to hear what James and Peter want: what they think they can actually do in a village where they’re not supposed to be. There’s not much for us to do, either, when we don’t want to waste money.

The wind blows against us, and I can see how up ahead, in the woods closer to the Shack, it makes trees bend – and I can hear it make them rustle. Those must be of the species with laterally flattened petioles in the leaves: aspens. Am I like them and tremble in any breeze, though I’m supposed to be strong, the rebel?

“It would be nice to get in – into an inn.” Remus slows down a bit. “What do you say if we try the Hog’s Head, for once? I’ve heard that there the drinks are cheaper than in the Three Broomsticks.”

I stop and let a small group of excited three-years pass. And right after I hear a soft whisper in my ear. Yes. “All right.”

We turn around and trudge back, with the wind mercifully behind us now. But it swirls leaves from those aspens past us: round yellow leaves, like… After getting to the side street that leads to the disreputable pub, I’m about to try and return the money to James, but I realise I’ll have to still use some of it to pay for drinks.

“Why haven’t we come here before? See that?” Remus points at the sign swinging above the door: a head of a slaughtered boar. “What a realistic portrait, with blood and all! This looks more exciting than the place where all students and teachers go,” he babbles on, opening the door and peeking in, probably faking apprehension, so as to allow James and Peter to enter ahead of us, under his arm. 

Having suddenly left the brightness of the day behind, I find it hard to see in what remains of the sunlight after the filter of the grimy windows, but I try to sound excited. “Yes, it’s banging in here!” And to make it easier for us to find ourselves all at the same table, and the safest one: I point to the corner farthest from the windows and the door. “We could sit over there. In the most mysteriously dark corner!”

When striding across the soil-covered floor towards the bar, I realise that despite the unwelcoming gloom there’s pleasant smoky warmth in the air. The few patrons – just five of them – are sitting hunched over their drinks. I first pass a threesome with hoods down till their bushy eyebrows, and with hands, even fingertips covered with sleeves: goblins or perhaps half-goblins. Reaching two men with matted manes of long, bushy hair, I’m taken unawares by one of them standing up, tall, just in front of me, too close to me.

But he turns away – to shuffle up to the bar – and grunts over his shoulder, “What?” 

Remus is at my side. “Hello! How much is a Butterbeer?”

The barman sighs, rounding the end of the counter. “Two Sickles one.”

“All right!” Remus says cheerfully, although that’s not cheap at all. “Then we’re taking two each.”

Without a word the man slams four dusty, dirty bottles on the bar. When he takes the silver coins from me, the gap between his curtains of hair offers a view to a long crooked nose, and even a glint of blue eyes, surrounded by such wrinkles which, surprisingly, hint that he knows how to smile.

Heading for the back corner, I start with a complaint, “No hot foam on top of the drinks here! Maybe this isn’t Butterbeer at all.” And I finish more hopefully, “But something stronger, instead.” 

“These bottles are neither very warm nor cold,” Remus points out just when stepping up to our table. “But you chose the right nook. Look: a wood burner!”

Close to the table there is, indeed, a small cast-iron stove, lighting us only with a dim red glow but radiating blissful heat. Here’s the source of the scent of burning wood – perhaps not completely dry wood, and that’s the reason why the smell reminds me less of proper fireplaces than our clandestine campfires, and makes me feel snug in an intimate way, and relaxed even before I get to finally sit down.

Having placed my two bottles on the table, I still have to move one chair, as if out of the way, next to the one that’s already been pushed against the wall. Remus, on my left, and I take seats with our backs towards the room. James and Peter may have responsibility for not revealing themselves in case anyone turns attention towards our corner.

Now I grab a drink, but before taking a swig I feel like feasting my eyes on the new warm shades on my Moony’s face. He shares a sigh of relief with me, then lifts his bottle. And when I lift mine to touch it, I feel and hear our bottles also clink softly – yes, through fabric – together with the other two, which have disappeared from the view without my noticing. Prongs and Wormy have sneaked their Butterbeers under the cloak.

The drink tastes… “More bitter than butter.” Perhaps it is strong.

I feel giddy. Odd, indeed, to be sitting – in a public place, a seedy inn, too – with all three of them, and to appear to be sitting with Moony alone. I’d rather have it the other way round, if possible.

Moony’s reaching out his hand, and not to me but to fumble for an invisible one. He’s put down his bottle and now he’s found the other friend’s hand, too. Should I do the same? Instead, I take out the chocolate bars and the Sickles.

“How are you?” Remus asks – them, of course.

“Fine, thanks. Relieved,” I reply in any case – for the sake of diversion, and to let him know. “Also because of the talk on the way.”

But from diagonally opposite to me, I hear James’s soft voice. “Good. The way was a bit taxing. Low, uneven. Didn’t have to wait long before heard you. You were great.”

“And the witch?” Remus asks eagerly.

“Who do you mean?” I reply, honestly baffled, and there’s no response from James or Peter. 

“Did you see the small wand and the text in the bubble?”

“Oh. Yes, I did. And that word, with a tap, worked like a charm. Thanks!”

“Yes. Thank you!” I say, sliding what remains of the silver, and one chocolate bar forward, towards James’s voice until I feel the edge of the cloak to slip it all under.

Giving two bars to that hand of Moony’s which has earlier reached out diagonally to touch Wormy’s, I say, “Let’s try if this beer tastes better with chocolate.”

Having breakfasted on a single penny bun – and not on any mushrooms with that name or any other – I feel ravenous. I stuff my mouth with chocolate, the best creamy, nutty kind my Moony’s chosen, and it adds to my pleasure to watch him, too, relish the deliciousness.

A smudge of chocolate on his lips raises in me a new peculiar desire to touch – just to touch with a fingertip. And the feeling doesn’t abate when his tongue wipes the smudge away.

“Look!” Peter’s sharp whisper startles me, as I’ve managed to ignore the fact that he’s there, looking. “Behind the bar!”

Wiping my mouth with strangely trembling fingers, I turn my head. 

There are two girls stepping out of a back room, one of them a redhead: Lily Evans! And the other one, who’s wearing bright yellow furry earmuffs, which look like canaries settled to build a nest of her messy hair – she’s not a student, after all.

“Hooch,” Remus breathes out softly.

What are those two doing here, and what can they possibly have been doing in the back room? The barman has stood up from the table again, and as he now walks up to the bar briskly and actually smiles, I decide I’m happy that the visitors are two, and that one of them is a teacher.

“Quite an experience, thank you!” the flying instructor, Quidditch referee is saying to Evans. “My first time – in this way, you know. Lovely for a change.”

My heart’s racing, and I glance towards James, having forgotten that I won’t see his expression. But I trust that he can’t even imagine the kind of experiences I’m thinking about. I try to remember she’s sixteen, not nine, although… And, after all, the earmuffs…”

Indeed, now Hooch is talking about the weather, “… such beautiful conditions, just the wind a bit harsh.”

“It was my pleasure to share…” Evans says, and turning to the barman, she continues, “And I’m always thankful to you, Aberforth: you’ve been a great accomplice, and friend.”

But now he inclines his head towards our corner and says something in a low voice. Evans looks alarmed for a moment.

However, she composes herself immediately, and waves to Remus and me. “Please, can you get a cup of tea for me, too, to warm myself up. I’m just going to say hello to those House mates of mine.”

She strides to us, smiling, and swinging in her hand a large turquoise shawl, which she’s perhaps covered her head with when outside, as her glowing hair still falls smooth down until her ears, where it’s been tied into neat braids. I can imagine – today, for some reason, better than ever – how mesmerising she looks in my brother’s eyes.

“Hello, Lupin, Black!” she says cheerfully.

While I mutter my reply, wondering what she is hiding, Remus – with his unwavering manners, or sense of strategy – hurries to stand up and offer his chair to her. “Evans, nice to meet you here!”

“You, too. Oh, thank you.” She sits down. “All right, I can stay for a moment. I didn’t know you were patrons.”

Remus manages to make it look natural that he grabs a chair from the neighbouring table, not from behind ours. And I must try my best to have a conversation.

“It’s the first time for us.” Evidently not for you.

No, instead of hinting at my curiosity, I’ll offer an explanation for our presence. To my relief, since the barman may give or may have already given her information on what we ordered, I notice that there are again four bottles visible on the table, two of them emptied.

I continue, explaining, “We came here in the hope of cheap Butterbeer, so that we could afford to drink more.”

“I do admire you,” she says with a lopsided grin, “so much that perhaps I’ll soon start calling you by your first names.”

“What? Admire us for what?” Remus laughs. “For drinking more?”

“No, I meant the way you…” She stabs her forefinger at my chest, so that it’s hard for me to stop from cringing. “I suppose I must start now, as it doesn’t make any sense to call you only by the name of the family whose bigotry and money you – Sirius – have rejected.”

“Oh, thanks…” I’ve lifted a hand onto my chest, and now, by some exaggerated rubbing, I try to make the gesture look comical. “Lily,” I finish, still embarrassed.

Remus, who probably doesn’t mind if he, too, is admired for being poor, sticks to the first topic. “It’s not cheap enough for us to pay for another drink; otherwise we’d buy one for you.”

“Thank you for the thought, but I’m having tea at the bar in a moment. And no, the prices aren’t better than in the Broomsticks. Puddifoot’s still more expensive. I don’t go there now when I no longer ask Severus for dates.”

“Well, I admire you for rejecting that doomed habit,” I can’t resist saying.

She looks at me slyly without replying, as if waiting to hear whether I’ll go on and insult Snivellus himself. Her eyes shine very green perhaps due to the colour of the shawl she’s spread over her shoulders, and as I hate to think Snape’s got to touch her, I decide not to even mention him.

“I have to admit I’m a bit surprised to see you with Hooch, though,” Remus says, “and to hear – we couldn’t help hearing – that you’ve enjoyed sharing...”

“Oh, it was just some tandem flying. You know, I’m not very good on a broom by myself, although she’s tried to teach me. It was only this once like this. My relationship with Rolanda is mainly physical – physical exercise, sports, I mean. Whereas with Aberforth it’s rather intellectual, I’d say…”

She’s trailed off and, leaning her elbows on the table, resting her chin on her crossed fingers, she seems to ponder, staring at the wall. I wonder if Remus has listened to her as dumbfounded as I have. Or did he just refer to some incredible acceptability of her possibly dating Madam Hooch?

“Disappointed in some brilliant students, I sometimes look for more mature company,” Evans goes on, still not even glancing at Remus or me.

Is she actually winking to the wall? “But perhaps I won’t mind sharing flights and more with a younger Quidditch talent, in case it’s not a fluke and he’s really maturing.”

Do I dare assume she’s flirting with James? Perhaps she’s sensed his presence – most probably smelled him.

Now she sits back and looks at the two of us. “I do admire you for your recent, more responsible pranks, too. It’s a pity that Potter and Pettigrew got caught by the Slytherin Head of House in the latest one. I don't think McGonagall would have punished them for ridiculing the blood-purists.”

“So you agree that it was a good idea to paint ‘Blood’s red in all our veins’ in the dungeon corridor? It was originally Remus’s idea.”

“Well, Remus, I hope you’ll call me Lily and a friend.” She pats his hand, making him smile of double, perhaps triple pleasure: because of our acknowledgments and her touch.

She’s actually called him Remus ever since our fourth year when he started his debates with Binns in Magic of History, challenging the ghastly prejudiced ideas professed by the ghost professor.

I continue, “The original masterpiece was a painting of slogans on the Slytherin common room wall one night – when was it, summer term of our fourth year?” As Remus still only nods, it’s up to me to go on. “And mind, we’re not encouraging violence, on the contrary: the paint is not blood red, but Gryffindor scarlet – just our signature colour, so you see, we don’t try to escape responsibility. The first time just no outsiders got to see the painting, only Slytherins, and they spread false rumours about why we were punished with the duty to scrub their common room clean without magic. Now, two weeks ago, James and Peter just started implementing the idea again, in a more public way, on a whim and without the two of us.”

“So glad to hear all that. I’m going to raise my cup of tea in their honour.” Evans stands up, with an ever wider smile. “Cheers!”

While watching her walk away with her braids swaying in the rhythm of her springy steps, I can hear our Prongs’s wistful sigh.

“Caution. Patience.” That’s Wormy hissing. 

And my brother Prongs, ever more smitten, whispers, “She’ll want to share. I’ll get my chance. A kiss – yes, patience – by the summer for sure.”

My Moony’s tender hand, stroking my knee, confirms that the two of us may set a similar goal.


End file.
